I had so many ideas for a Kakuzu&Hidan fic, but I could only carry out one of them to this story. A shame, cos they would have fitted the chess idea. I will appreciate it so much if you bother to review! Honestly.
When Deidara told me Hidan was good at chess I almost laughed. Though, Deidara admitted he had won Hidan a few times, but he put much weight on the fact that he had played with him probably over five hundred times, so it wasn't much compared to how many times Hidan had won. Deidara also said he believed Hidan let him win, since his losses seemed so random. At that time I didn't know what he meant by "random". How could you lose randomly? You either play good and win or play bad and lose. Yes, it was unusual for him to say Hidan was good at anything, I think because he's never good at anything that makes any sense, but if you've ever seen how the guy talks, acts or, most importantly, fights you have to agree with me. In a million years Hidan, who had zero common sense whatsoever, would be good at chess.
Of course, Deidara was maybe a bigger idiot, but I still found it hard to believe. Why do you think the guy gets caught everywhere and every freaking time? Because Hidan holds the top what comes to being an idiot in tactics. And chess is all about tactics. There's no way Hidan would win anyone in something that involved tactics. And yes, what some of you are probably thinking about, apparently he sucked at shogi. So what was with chess that made him so good? I thought he cheated. Or maybe Deidara sucked even more with tactics. But this was taken back when I heard he had played against other Akatsuki members too. And won. He had even won the famous Uchiha Itachi. If he won Itachi in a game, why hadn't I heard anything about his talent before? He should've bragged at least.
Obviously, I wanted to see him play. I wanted to know how he did it. So I asked Deidara to play with him. Hidan had nothing better to do so he agreed, not knowing though that Deidara had told me about his talent, but rather thought that I was just bored and, with the lack of doing something, watched them play. Chess takes a lot of concentration. That's a common knowledge, right? Hidan can't concentrate on anything, really, I think that's why he sucks at tactics. He can't concentrate so long he would have the time to plan even a half of a strategy. He doesn't seem to concentrate on chess either. When a good chess player considers dozens of different moves to make, Hidan makes up only one and doesn't even seem to consider that one. If Deidara hadn't told me Hidan won almost every time, I would have thought he's victory was damn good luck and not paid further attention. If he had a strategy in that game, I would guess it was forming a smiley in the middle of the chessboard. In which he failed, unfortunately.
After that Deidara forced Sasori to play against Hidan. Sasori wasn't a single bit interested in the game. He probably was trying to write his name on the board and I think he succeeded at writing the letter "S" and half of an "A". Hidan won, which to me didn't seem like a big surprise because of the way Sasori's moves were, but he seemed to start paying attention only then. Either he thought even a two year old could win Hidan, or he realized that the other actually could play and, like any of us, was highly confused. I was next. By now Hidan must've have realized we were there only to watch him, not anyone else, play. The others had too joined in the audience, so it was too obvious. And so Hidan stretched, yawned and told Deidara to take his place. Typical. He knew everyone wanted to see him play, so of course he didn't play, not when no one said it out loud. And if someone said to Hidan he wanted to see him play, he would ask why.
Hidan of course knew he was better at chess than anyone else here, but like anyone was going to say that out loud. Damn proud people, me include. But what would they answer anyway? "Because you're so awesome and I want to copy your strategies". Hmm, maybe not. And at this point, I have to point out that Hidan's strategies were impossible to copy. He didn't do the same moves regularly, he had no plan to follow with his moves and he often started with a different piece than he started last time. So there really was no strategy to copy. Some days later I finally got to play with Hidan. We were alone in the living room and, when he didn't seem to have anything to do, I asked him to play with me. I have to admit, I would have had some stuff to do, nothing too important thankfully. Yes, now be shocked: So maybe I really, really wanted to play with him.
I had known the guy for who knows how long and have come to the conclusion the guys a tactic idiot. And then he turns out to be the master of the mother of all tactic games. Now do you wonder why I wanted to play? It's also completely different to play yourself than to view from the side. Sasori seemed to like that though. Every time he happened to walk by when Hidan played he stopped to watch even if only for a few minutes. He was planning something fishy, I knew it and I was right. But let's move on chronologically. The first time I played with Hidan I lost shamefully quickly. From what I've seen him play, I know the total time of the game is as random as are his moves and so I was just unlucky. Still, I didn't want the first time to fail so badly. Oh well. Anyway, as the time passed it became easier for me to ask him to play chess with me and eventually it came out naturally.
And yes, it had been a bit uncomfortable to ask him at the start. Asking Hidan to play a game that required intelligence, as much as chess, was as good as announcing he's clever with a big neon sign and a megaphone. I wasn't going to admit that, it would go against my every belief in him. I still won't, you don't necessarily need to be smart to be good at chess. But it felt like it, since Hidan was becoming a local attraction inside the Akatsuki. He and his chess. The first time I won wasn't anything special. It just happened. He didn't care and I couldn't start cheering or anything. Not like I felt like cheering. It was like an accident. I wasn't playing better than him, no, despite me winning he was still playing way more skillfully than I was. I won the battle, but I lost the war. And I won the battle because someone just happened to stumble over a nuclear bomb in the enemy's camp. So that's what Deidara meant by random.
As it came regular for me and Hidan to play, like it had already come for Deidara and Hidan, Sasori started to have interest in the actual playing. He might have randomly decided he wanted to play with Hidan and I was thrown out of my seat. It wasn't regular, the kind of what I've talked about, he just sometimes came out of the blue and announced he wanted to play. Just like that. And Hidan always played. He seemed to enjoy watching Sasori play against himself. Hidan actually liked playing with Sasori. That's when I realized, when playing with others, he didn't care, but it was different with him. What was so special about Sasori? The guy wasn't any better than the rest of us. Why was it different when played against him? After what seemed like ages of frustration, I figured out an explanation.
Everyone else had ages ago abandoned the idea that Hidan had an actual plan when he was playing. All except Sasori. And Hidan wanted to see if he could succeed at figuring it out. He enjoyed watching someone try to solve his little mystery, but apparently noticing there truly was a mystery was a part of it too. I started playing with him again, as I had refused to do so since I was being so easily overthrown. And I started to study his game more carefully, trying to find out what he did that made him win. But, because Sasori had started his research earlier, he was much faster to discover something. He came, like usual, sitting next to the table and watching us play. That time, I won. Right after it, Sasori declared my seat as his own, he and Hidan starting a new game.
I noticed Hidan's face lit up some way in excitement and found myself once again asking the dreaded question: Why did he like playing with Sasori so much? I was pretty sure I had gotten it right before, but he still didn't pay attention when he was playing with me, even how much I tried. Hidan lost once again. "It's not a game, it's a play". Sasori said afterwards, while staring Hidan in a challenging way, furrowing his brows. Hidan smirked back as smugly as a person could. "Who's the left bishop?" Sasori continued. No one changed seats that time like usually after a game. They just sat there. It was pretty obvious they had some sort of a, staring I think, contest going on there and no one was that eager to interrupt such an intense moment. I personally wanted to know where it was going, because, even after Sasori had presented his question, I had no idea what they were talking about.
"The one who will die first". And with that, Hidan was going again. On his way out he almost walked over Deidara. Literally. A weird thing about Hidan. People are just obstacles to him and he would even walk over them, like that time over Deidara, if it was the easiest way to get to the other side of them. That would also be called lazy. But that's completely out of subject. I was trying to talk to Sasori about what he had figured out, but I was cut in by Deidara, who was upset because Sasori spent so much time playing chess with Hidan. You know, that's funny, Deidara was the one who played chess with Hidan almost daily until Deidara forced, notice the word forced here, Sasori to play it too with, in here you should put a mark too, Hidan. Maybe he had also noticed that Hidan had liked playing with Sasori, but what he hadn't noticed was why. So when Sasori assured he was done with chess, Deidara took him away to do something with him. And I couldn't ask him. But I had time for that later.
And since we are talking about Hidan's chess ability here, we'll jump right over to the next week, when I had, or more likely, Sasori had the time to talk about it. I simply asked him if he had figured out how could Hidan, a complete idiot what came to all strategies and tactics, I only used idiot that time though, could ever be so good at chess. And you know what? Sasori gave me a look that asked if it was a joke or was I someway left behind. That would be the rough explanation of it. He told me hadn't even tried to figure out why Hidan was winning all the time, he was trying to find out why did he lose from time to time. So the more exact explanation for his look was pretty much this: Do you really think it's impossible for him to be good at chess? And that's when I truly understood why Hidan had enjoyed playing chess when Sasori was his opponent. Sasori was the only one who believed he actually could be good at chess and at the same time was interested in solving the real question.
Why would a great chess player like Hidan lose to amateurs like us when it was obvious he was more than capable of beating us down? It wasn't pity, that was sure. I asked him if he would tell me why he lost, but he only told me to keep a good eye on the left bishop. And I did. The next time we played. Hidan used that bishop a lot. I had never noticed that. He sent it into sincerely stupid situations and still somehow managed to get away with it. He eventually won, but it was hardly ever because of the bishop. He knew how to play, with any piece, I admit that. When he seems to be just throwing the pieces where ever they fit, he actually just thinks about all the possible moves so quickly no one has the time to realize it. I found it hard to believe, since I had no real evidence of this being true and also because of the way Hidan happened to be, but that was the only possible explanation for it. Still, I started paying extra attention to the left bishop, like Sasori told me to, and came to an interesting solution.
Before I actually put my idea into a test, I observed Hidan's game with the others for a while. And finally Hidan was eager to play with me. I could actually see the glee in his eyes, which made want to cheer even more, when I first won him not by an accident. I didn't cheer though, but I wanted to. Not really because I had won, but because I had realized how. Hidan was still a way more talented player and I hadn't won him because I had played better than him. For some reason, every time the left bishop was captured, Hidan lost. I didn't know why exactly, he didn't need the left bishop in anything special and he still had the right one left, but he always chose to lose when it happened. I asked him that at the end of that specific game. "Because when the bishop goes down, nothing's ever going to work out. That's real life".
I was almost going to remark that this was a game not real life, but before I got the words out of my mouth, I remembered Sasori's words when he had realized what Hidan was doing: "It's not a game, it's a play". Hidan was never playing a game called chess, he was playing an act called life. At that point I wondered how Sasori had ever managed to find out anything, that was just way too far-fetched. How could anyone figure that out? Even the bishop was a little too much. He didn't do anything special with it, why would anyone pay any special attention it? He didn't use it that much, if anything, it seemed like he wanted to get it killed, not appoint the outcome. Perhaps Sasori stared at every piece until he had found the one that made any difference. That made some sense.
But then again, why did he do that was just a thoroughly stupid thing to get only by staring. To a normal person, it didn't mean anything in the real life if the bishop got killed. Yes, if you just thought that Hidan's view of life made no sense, I agreed with you. Who was the bishop supposed to be anyway? Oh yes, Sasori's question. So that the wonder boy didn't solve. "The one who will die first". Basically the bishop was no one until someone got killed and then became the bishop. Actually, now when I think about it and now when I've put it on a paper, I suppose it does make sense. One is a start of a million, like they say, or if we look at a small organization like the Akatsuki, start of a ten. And I guess you could think like that: Dying of a one member would eventually lead to the deaths of the other members too. Funny. But like that was ever going to happen.